Hi, my name is Tina and I’m a recovering fundamentalist

This is a hard entry, but it’s one I’ve wanted to write for a while. It’s about how I came to be who I am, where I’ve come from and how I changed.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a minister. I had all the answers to questions of faith and dreamed of leading hundreds of people to _Jeeezus_. I was a judgmental little shit and a hypocrite, but I had good intentions. In many ways I mirrored so many fundamentalists out there today, which is why fundamentalists scare me shitless.

I loved my neighbor, as long as my neighbor went to church, abstained from sex until they hit the marital hay, and they refrained from entertaining naughty thoughts about their buddies in the locker room. I was properly penitent in church, played by the rules, and I was only bad when no one was looking.

I did, said, and thought some really horrible things, but I figured that my hate was justified because I was a Christian. I’m still doing my penance for that awful little girl I once was, not because the Bible, a minister, or Jodie Foster tell me to, but because I just plain feel bad about the things I said and did.

I regularly told my parents that they would go to hell.

I harbored animosity toward friends and family members because of their sexual preferences and sexual activity. I didn’t realize that the reason why my mentors were so adamant about sexual sin was because they had been taught to be ashamed of their own sexuality. Of course, this caused _me_ problems, since I was learning this shame as well. While I learned to feel loathing and disdain toward others, I also learned to feel them toward myself.

I hated because I was young and hadn’t yet developed the critical thinking skills necessary to detect poorly disguised bullshit. I was impressionable and looking for guidance, which I found from mentors who fed me all that hate. It was a form of abuse, but it was one that I wriggled away from as I grew up and grew away from that “support system.” I grew up and got out, only to look back and feel bad for my friends that didn’t.

I went through a bit of a late rebellion when I left the church. I think that, perhaps, my rebellious stage went overboard at some points, but it taught me quite a bit and gave me opportunities to make friends that I would have never approached before. The one problem with my rebellion was that I overcompensated for my former zealousness and became combative toward organized religion.

It took years for me to actually come back to a church without resentment and suspicion. When I finally came back to church it was gradually, like a feral cat inching toward a food bowl set out on the back steps. Little by little, step by step, I came back and found a community different than the one I left.

Because of who I was, whenever I see a misguided fundamentalist or religious righter screaming at a pride march, abortion clinic, or college campus, I feel fear, sadness and disgust. When I hear yet another hate-filled statement aimed at anyone who doesn’t fit the holy mold I have to choke back my own hatred. I know that, as someone who follows Christ’s teachings, I should love and forgive these people but it is just so _damned hard_ sometimes, especially when it’s taken so long to forgive myself for being one of them.